The Silent Heir Finally Speaks

I only learned how to speak when I was eight years old. Everyone in the Wentworth family calls me an idiot. Even my mom secretly wipes her tears away, thinking that she's given birth to an autistic son. My dad looks at me with disappointment in his eyes. But he never sends me to a special-needs school due to his need to preserve the family's reputation. One day, Winston Pembroke from Broadwell Street comes over to purchase my family's company, Wentworth Group. He puts on a high and mighty attitude and berates everyone in the meeting room to the point that they can only hang their heads in shame. Despite the room being filled with the company's elites, no one dares to respond to Winston. As I stand in a corner, I feel my eyelids drooping while listening to Winston's tirade. Ugh. How annoying. So, I take a step forward and utter my first ever sentence in Winston's mother tongue. Chapter 1 My name was Nathaniel Wentworth. I was the eldest grandson of the first branch of the Wentworth family and the sole direct heir to Wentworth Group. By all accounts, I should've been living a picture-perfect life, born with a silver spoon in my mouth. But I was already eight years old, and I still hadn't spoken a single word. Everyone in the household knew that I was a total idiot. Mom came from a highly educated family in Jandor. Gentle, elegant, and deeply cultured, she poured every ounce of her love into me. She would hold me in her arms, patiently trying to teach me over and over again. "Nathaniel, say Mommy…" I would just stare right back at her, completely silent. The spark in her eyes would gradually dim until she turned around to discreetly dab the corners of her eyes with a tissue. She assumed I didn't notice, but I understood everything. It wasn't that I couldn't speak. I simply chose not to. I had been born with all the memories of my previous life completely intact. In my previous life, I was a fast-talking financial analyst on Broadwell Street. I spent 30 years running my mouth until I was thoroughly burned out. This time, I planned to quietly coast along as a useless trust-fund baby and enjoy the high life. Unfortunately, I heavily underestimated the sheer weight of my position. Being the eldest grandson of the Wentworth family wasn't a ticket to endless luxury. It was a gilded cage. Dad was the chairman of Wentworth Group, a cutthroat businessman to his core. Yet, every time he looked at me, a tiny flicker of desperation would dance in his eyes. "Nathaniel, do you know what these figures represent?" he asked, pointing to the numbers on a quarterly financial statement. I nodded. "Can you point out our net profit margin for this quarter?" I reached out with my small hand and pointed precisely at the correct percentage. The expectation in his eyes flared. Then, he leaned in closer, asking the one question he desperately wanted answered. "Nathaniel, can you say 'Daddy' for me?" I looked at him, maintaining my absolute wall of silence. The light in his eyes vanished instantly. Nothing remained but disappointment—a thick, suffocating wave of it. He sat in heavy, agonizing silence for a long time before suddenly getting up and striding out of the room. Dad let out a heavy, defeated sigh that felt solid enough to shatter every glass partition on the floor. I knew that if I weren't the only direct grandson, and if Mom's family didn't hold such massive leverage, my spot as the heir would've been stripped away years ago. Over time, even my cousins started treating me differently. Their initial caution quickly devolved into blatant, unmitigated mockery. "Hey, Nathaniel, did you actually understand a single word the tutor said during our Erudian class today?" The boy speaking was Sebastian Wentworth, my Uncle Frederick's son. He was only a year younger than me, but he was incredibly articulate and a massive favorite of Dad's. I shot him a glance, not bothering to respond, but my total lack of reaction only made him grin wider. "Oh, right, I completely forgot," Sebastian said. "You're a once-in-a-generation prodigy. You were born knowing everything in the universe, unlike us mere mortals who actually have to hit the books." "Sebastian, don't talk about Nathaniel like that," Charlotte Wentworth, my Uncle Edmund's daughter, chimed in with a fake display of sweetness. "He just doesn't deign to speak to commoners like us; that's all. As the saying goes, speech is silver, and silence is golden." They bounced off each other flawlessly. The nannies kept their eyes glued to the floor, but their shoulders were twitching in amusement. They were laughing at the mute. I walked right past them with a completely deadpan expression. It was like watching two monkeys in a barrel. They were a bore and incredibly childish. Chapter 2 Mom saw everything, and it broke her heart. That night, she held me tightly in her arms again, her tears soaking through the shoulder of my shirt. "My sweet Nathaniel, why won't you speak to me?" she whispered. "If you could just say one word, just a single word, I could die happy." I could feel her body trembling. It was the heavy despair of a mother who felt entirely helpless. My heart, after all, wasn't made of stone. For the first time, my resolve began to fracture. Perhaps it was finally time for me to speak. But just as I parted my lips, preparing to enunciate a long-unused syllable, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed outside the study door. Malcolm Prescott, our butler, practically burst into the room. "Mrs. Wentworth, we have a massive problem!" he said. "The delegation from Ashbury has arrived. The Broadwell Street hedge-fund tycoon, Winston Pembroke, is already at the office!" Mom's face instantly drained of color. Winston Pembroke. That name was a dark, suffocating cloud that had been hanging over Wentworth Group for months. He was the most ruthless vulture on Broadwell Street, a corporate raider who specialized in shorting and dismantling historic Anoria-focused conglomerates. Over the past few years alone, his fund had aggressively acquired three legacy corporations of our exact scale. "What is he doing here?" Mom demanded. Malcolm's voice shook. "H-He's here to negotiate an acquisition, but his tone was incredibly insulting. He said that he was here to make sure the Wentworths bow out of the market with what little dignity we have left!" Mom stumbled backward, catching her balance against the edge of the desk. A negotiated acquisition was just a polite euphemism for a hostile takeover. A massive corporate storm was about to breach our walls. I looked up, staring out the window at the bleak, gray horizon. It seemed my dream of quietly coasting along as a useless trust-fund baby was officially coming to an end. So be it. There were always some fools rushing in to poke the sleeping bear. Dad called an emergency meeting at the penthouse conference room, summoning every prominent family member and high-level executive. I was dragged along, too, left to stand quietly in the far corner of the room. It was family protocol. As the eldest grandson, I was required to be present for all major family events. In the past, I would usually find a blind spot, stand there all morning, and completely tune out. Today, however, the atmosphere felt off. The conference room was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop, and a humiliated, dark pallor washed over everyone's face. Dad sat at the head of the long table, his expression dark enough to kill. Standing right across from him was a tall, middle-aged man clad in a custom-tailored suit. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses hid a pair of sharp, predatory eyes. This was Winston Pembroke, born with an Anorian face, but a shark raised in the cutthroat waters of Broadwell Street. "Mr. Wentworth, is this how the Wentworths treat their guests?" Winston spoke, his Corvian flawless, though his tone dripped with mockery. "I endured a grueling 14-hour flight from Newford, and this is the best your team can offer me?" He extended a slender finger, gesturing dismissively toward the row of trembling executives lined up across the table. "You're just a room full of glorified bean-counters who can do nothing but stare blankly at spreadsheets! "I try to talk to you about capital, and you try to talk to me about sentimental value. I try to explain market indicators, and you give me a lecture on your century-old legacy. "It's pathetic! Absolutely pathetic!" He burst into a loud, arrogant laugh. The sound echoed sharply off the walls of the solemn conference room, grating on everyone's nerves. "Mr. Pembroke!" Randall Carlisle, our Chief Financial Officer, slammed his hands on the table and stood up, his body shaking with rage. "This is a Wentworth Group board meeting. Your insolence will not be tolerated here!" Winston shot him a sideways glance, disdain flashing across his face. "Ah, Randall, I recognize you," Winston sneered. "You were the one lecturing me yesterday about how a family business has 'soul.' "Let me tell you something about how we operate on Broadwell Street. A soul that doesn't generate profit means absolutely nothing. Only the weak try to mask their utter incompetence with sentimentality!" Chapter 3 Randall's face flushed crimson. He pointed a trembling finger at Winston, sputtering incoherently before choking on his own breath and collapsing backward. "Mr. Carlisle!" The surrounding executives scrambled to catch him as a wave of panic rippled through the conference room. Dad slammed his palm onto the table, roaring, "That's enough!" Winston reigned in his antics a fraction, though the contempt etched across his face didn't fade in the slightest. He gave my dad a casual, incredibly half-hearted nod. "Mr. Wentworth, I'm not here to waste your time," Winston said smoothly. "Our hedge fund's investment committee has run the numbers. According to your stock price, Wentworth Group won't survive past next year. "If you sell right now, you can still walk away with three billion dollars. But once we deploy our short-sellers, I'm afraid you won't even be left with one billion. "Furthermore, we've taken an interest in Wentworth Group's commercial plot in the south of the city. We intend to redevelop it into luxury residential real estate. "And finally, I've heard excellent things about your software engineering division. We want a complete acqui-hire of that entire team—" Before he could even finish his sentence, the conference room devolved into chaos. A bottom-dollar acquisition, stealing our real estate, and poaching our technical team. This wasn't a standard acquisition; this was a calculated corporate raid to liquidate Wentworth Group. "This is outrageous!" "Get out of here!" "Derek, we can't roll over for this guy! We have to fight back!" Over by Uncle Frederick's side of the table, several hot-headed shareholders were already past their breaking point, shouting over one another. Winston sneered, "Fight back? Be my guest." He shifted his gaze to Uncle Frederick, who was leading the outcry. "I recognize you. You're the second son of the Wentworth family, correct? Three years ago, you spearheaded that commercial development project. How much did you end up burning? 200 million dollars? Or was it 300 million dollars?" Frederick's face flushed deep crimson, looking like a man who had been kicked in the teeth. His fists clenched so tightly the veins bulged against his skin, yet he couldn't utter a word. Winston turned his attention to another executive. "And you're the marketing director, right? During Black Friday last year, how much did you dump into your ad spend? And what was your actual conversion rate? That pathetic single-digit growth didn't even cover your ad spend, did it?" The director instantly lowered his head, embarrassment flickering across his face. Winston's eyes swept across the long table. One by one, every single shareholder who had just been screaming sank back into their chairs. The conference room plunged into an agonizing silence once more. It was a heavy, suffocating silence born from humiliation and helplessness. Standing in the corner, I watched the spectacle unfold. These were supposed to be the elite minds of the Wentworth Group. The financial team couldn't win a basic numbers argument, and the marketing division had its deepest failures exposed. A room packed to the brim with seasoned corporate executives was being thoroughly browbeaten by a single Broadwell Street raider, and not one of them could even lift their chin. Honestly, I was starting to get a little sleepy. This scene was turning out to be far more embarrassing than I had anticipated. It looked exactly like a group of grown men pinned into an alleyway by a street thug, getting kicked in the teeth, yet lacking the courage to make a sound. Dad's chest rose and fell in heavy, ragged breaths. I knew he was teetering on the edge of an explosive tirade, but he couldn't let it rip. Because everything Winston was saying was a cold, hard fact. Wentworth Group's performance metrics were on a downward slide, and this was the brutal reality of being the weaker player at the table. Winston looked thoroughly pleased with the reaction he had received. He cleared his throat, preparing to drop even more outrageous terms onto the table. "Since the room has gone quiet, I'll take that as a unanimous agreement," Winston droned on. "We also require—" His voice buzzed in my ear like a persistent housefly. I had fully intended to remain a completely quiet spectator today, but this particular fly was just getting far too loud. I was genuinely annoyed now. Inside the deathly quiet conference room, every single executive kept their eyes glued to the table. Nobody noticed me back in my blind spot. And so, I moved. I took a single step forward, walking out of the shadows of the corner and stepping directly into the light.